1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the diagnosis and prognosis of colorectal cancer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most frequent cancer in the world. Serum tumour markers such as carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) (Gold and Freedman, 1965), cytokeratins (Moll et al. 1982), CA19-9, CA 242 (Nilsson et al. 1992), CA 72-4 (Fernandez-Fernandez et al. 1995), VEGF (Broll et al. 2001), p53 (Shiota et al. 2000; Hammel et al. 2000), HNP 1-3 (Albrethsen et al. 2005), RCAS1 (Yamagushi et al. 2005), Apolipoprotein A-I, Apolipoprotein C-I (Engwegen et al. 2006), Complement C3a des-arg, alpha-1-antitrypsin, transferring (Ward et al. 2006) and PSME3 (Roessler et al. 2006) have been identified. However, there is a need to find new biomarkers for CRC in tumour tissue samples and body fluid (e.g. plasma) samples.